3/23/2011 @ 6:00PM

Review: The Nintendo 3DS

In 1985
Nintendo
jump-started a moribund home videogame market with the Nintendo Entertainment System. In 2006 the company changed the industry again with the Nintendo Wii, creating a mania of Marios swinging controllers in the air.

Now it’s rewriting the rules anew, this time in three dimensions. The Nintendo 3DS, on sale in North America beginning Mar. 27, will look familiar to any gamer. Nintendo has sold more than 145 million units in the DS line since 2004, making it the bestselling portable game device in history. The latest member of the family looks just like its siblings: a pocket-size, clamshell-hinged brick of plastic, with screens on both inside faces.

But turn the gadget on and it’s an entirely new experience. The top screen of the 3DS is obscured by a parallax barrier, so each of your eyes sees a different set of pixels. The result is a display of eye-popping 3-D graphics, without special glasses.

When Nintendo announced the 3DS in March 2010, some observers (myself included) criticized the company for jumping on the post-Avatar 3-D bandwagon. Across Hollywood and the consumer electronics industry, 3-D products have been pushed as the next big thing. Consumer response has been lukewarm, though, with 3-D TV sales falling short of industry expectations in 2010.

But after playing with the 3DS at home and on the road, I’m a believer. The 3DS isn’t perfect, but it has me sold on the technology and its potential. This device makes the case for a brand-new way of doing things.

Playing a 3-D game on the gadget is far more compelling than staring at a flat image. In one game, Pilotwings Resorts, players fly an airplane around an island, steering through hoops or popping balloons. I found myself ignoring the objectives of the game and simply flying around the landscape, looping around trees and under bridges. I was enjoying the experience more than competing for a score. And for the first time in a videogame I felt like I was moving around obstacles, not just dodging to the left or right.

The 3DS also opens up entirely new forms of play. In the game Steel Diver the 3DS functions as a submarine periscope, with the screen displaying a view of enemy ships on the surface. A gyroscope inside the device senses movement, so as you turn your body the image of the surface scrolls to match your movements. Playing this game in my desk chair I could rotate freely, and between the depth of the image and the motion required to play, I forgot I was spinning around stupidly in my office; I was deep underwater at the helm of an attack submarine.

Even games that aren’t specifically written for the 3DS benefit from the 3-D display. LEGO Star Wars III is being released this month on just about every gaming platform, and the game is basically the same on each. But viewed in 3-D it feels different; wandering through caves or the corridors of a starship, you gain a new sense of scale and distance.

The 3DS does have significant drawbacks. The 3-D effect works only in a limited viewing range, outside of which the image gets blurry. There are also concerns about eyestrain and the potential for vision damage in small children. While I didn’t experience any negative side effects, Nintendo printed health warnings on the box and labeled it “3D mode for ages 7 and up.” Notices also appear while you’re playing, reminding you to take a break. Until someone works out a way to fix the technological limitations, I can’t see 3-D gaming becoming the standard in the industry.

The other thing holding back the 3DS is price. At $250 it is significantly more than
Sony
‘s $129 PlayStation Portable and Nintendo’s own $129 DS Lite. It’s even more than the Nintendo Wii. At that price consumers may decide to buy one of the console systems instead.

Still, the 3DS is likely to be a big success. When the device was released in Japan on Feb. 26, it sold 400,000 units in 24 hours; for weeks there were shortages. Even if the 3DS doesn’t sell a single unit in the U.S., it’s already proved that 3-D videogames aren’t just a gimmick.